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Friday, August 22, 2014

Kathryn CaveEditor at IDG Connect writes, "We take a look at the potential and promise in eLearning through the decades and around the world."

Photo:One Laptop per Child via Flickr

In 1917 my 11-year old great-grandfather caught a boat from his home
in Mombasa, Kenya across the ocean to the Kathiawar peninsular on the
western edge of India to attend school. Plumped straight into a world of
strict vegetarianism - even in the holidays - this was a vastly
different culture. Yet after three years he moved again, to the UK, for
still more seismic changes. Finally, in 1922, he made the then mammoth
journey to Darjeeling on the eastern side of India, to complete his
secondary education.

In a world long before air travel, or the internet, these distances
seem truly incredible, not to mention expensive, but such is the draw of
a ‘good’ education. Then, as now, a solid command of English, sat at
the very centre of it all. Whilst in the early twentieth century this
went one step further as Britain, and all its colonies, were moderated
under one system: the Cambridge Examining Board.This saw students tested in subjects like English, History, French,
Greek and Latin and offered a common benchmark for everyone; albeit an
Anglocentric one. My great-grandfather took his in Junior Cambridge Exam
in 1923. And now, nearly a century later, with the help of technology,
these exact same learning trends have been magnified out again, far into
the adult arena.There are the distance learning platforms like the Open University,
constant real-time webinars and most importantly of all, Massive Open
Online Courses or ‘MOOCs’, which
mean anyone can glean the ‘benefits’ of a prestigious Harvard (or
elsewhere) education, all from the comfort of their own home. In fact,
the BBC World Service ran an excellent documentary, ‘The Education Revolution’ on the impact of all this in emerging regions, like Kenya, a few months back.

Geography: eLearning in Emerging Regions In the same way the Cambridge Exam Board ruled the roost in its day,
today cache comes from affiliated institutions. Now, as then, there is
also an especially heartfelt emphasis on education in emerging regions,
like Kenya. As James Hanaway, Head of Development at eLearning charity, Camara, explains:

“There is a real ambition to be in school across [all] the countries
[we work in, through Africa]. This is the pathway to bettering yourself
and there is hunger for education that is a lot more apparent within the
kids in the school [than you ever see here in the UK]. They want to
absorb everything.”

Dan Oja and June Jamrich Parsons are based in the US and produce
eLearning content and solutions. Over the last couple of years they have
been building partnerships with companies on the ground in India,
Pakistan and the Middle East, to supply technological platforms and
premium quality materials:

“The thing that really surprised me was the number of students in
private school,” says Parsons. “[And because parents are paying] they
want results [this means testing software and materials].

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About Me

Hello, my name is Helge Scherlund and I am the Education Editor and Online Educator of this personal weblog and the founder of eLearning • Computer-Mediated Communication Center.
I have an education in the teaching adults and adult learning from Roskilde University, with Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) and Human Resource Development (HRD) as specially studied subjects. I am the author of several articles and publications about the use of decision support tools, e-learning and computer-mediated communication. I am a member of The Danish Mathematical Society (DMF), The Danish Society for Theoretical Statistics (DSTS) and an individual member of the European Mathematical Society (EMS). Note: Comments published here are purely my own and do not reflect those of my current or future employers or other organizations.